Last Sunday most Americans moved our clocks ahead one hour for Daylight Savings time. In Fall we move them back. I know there are a few exceptions, like AZ and Hawaii. However, I am wondering, what about other countries? Canada, Europeans, Asians, etc.? Do they perform the same semi-annual time change?
Apparently, many do. Not everybody, though. This site gives a list of many countries that observe DST, and also indicates the dates of the time shifts (those aren’t universal, either).
They point out that there’s no sense in doing it near the equator, where the hours of daylight don’t vary all that much over the course of a year.
That linked page is part of a larger site expounding on the wonders of DST, which I haven’t yet fully explored.
Thanks for the link. Looks like most of the developed nations away from the equator do it, except for the Oriental countries like Japan and China. I wonder why it hasn’t caught on there?
It’s not terribly consistent any way you slice it. The distributed database of timezones with the java sdk includes over 300 timezones, many of them various world cities, instead of timezone names. I once printed them all out, with their offsets from GMT, and whether they had DST or not. You get stuff like:
Australia/Adelaide: 34200000, YES
Australia/Brisbane: 36000000, NO
Australia/Broken_Hill: 34200000, YES
Australia/Darwin: 34200000, NO
Australia/Hobart: 36000000, YES
Australia/Lord_Howe: 37800000, YES
Australia/Perth: 28800000, NO
Australia/Sydney: 36000000, YES
Note the inconsistency among cities in Australia within the same time zone.
Then, as for the equator, note:
Pacific/Fiji: 43200000, YES
From Australia - Great research yabob, although I confess I have trouble understanding the timezone codes.
The reason for the difference between cities in the same timezone (Brisbane, Sydney) is the fact that they are in different states. Brisbane is in Queensland, a conservative state with fewer city-dwellers, and they are less enthusiastic about daylight saving there. They do have it but start it later and finish earlier.
This year, because of the Sydney Olympics, daylight saving all over started much earlier (didn’t want to confuse the athletes and spectators with a time change in the middle of the games!), and consequently we had the longest “summer” ever - seven months of lovely daylight saving.
Most Australians love daylight saving. A favourite memory of Sydney is walking home after work, past those big old-fashioned pubs with deep verandahs, covered in iron lace-work, and packed with tanned Sydney-siders, laughing and talking, with hours of gentle daylight stretching before us all.
Oh dear. The Melbourne autumn is still mild, but winter weather lies ahead. It can get cold in Oz, you know.
Redboss
Brisbane a conservative town? Never! Reminds me of the old joke about a plane flying from Sydney to Brisbane: “We will shortly be landing in Brisbane. Please wind your watches back one hour and twenty years.” heheheh
So I’m still welcome at the Brisbane Dopefest, right guys? Guys? Guys???
Personally, I like daylight saving, but I remember seeing some research once that pointed out that a company with an office in Sydney and an office in Perth, after factoring in the basic time difference, the added daylight saving difference, and lunch and coffe breaks, only had ten minutes in normal business hours in which the two offices could telephone each other. :o
I spent a summer in Hokkaido, which is pretty darn far northern Japan, they don’t have daylight savings time. The summers were really weird without DST. I could never quite tell what time it was just by the daylight. It didn’t help that I had to get on the train for school at 5AM.
Europe switched over 3 – 4 weeks ago. Can’t remember when we go back again – is it October ?
OK, class! All together now…
Let’s follow the good example of Redboss and practice saying-- Daylight Saving Time, not Savings.
Yer welcome.
Daylight saving also doesn’t make much sense in the high latitudes, where summer days are so long that it’s a question of whether sunrise will be at 2:30 or 3:30 in the morning. But Norway, Sweden and Finland change anyway, to keep things consistent with the rest of Europe.
Iceland doesn’t change. Greenland does to stay in line with the rest of Denmark.